I would like some information about property owned or leased by the Council, as detailed below.

Please would you provide me with a list of all open, wooded, or agricultural property. (Please exclude allotments, cemetaries, school playing fields, car parks and highways, and parcels of less than 0.5 acres, unless doing so would add to the cost of the reply.)

For each property, please tell me:
- Exact size in hectares
- Postcode
- Parish
- Current use (e.g. agricultural, park, vacant, surplus, etc)
- Whether tenanted (or sublet) or not
- Tenure (i.e. does the city own it freehold, or leasehold)

For each tenanted/sublet agricultural property, please tell me:
- Name of tenant
- Type of tenancy (e.g., annual agreement, FBT, AHA, grazing license, etc.)
- Start date of tenancy
- End date of tenancy
- Next break clause date (unless this will take undue time to find out)
- Annual rent paid
- Date of previous rent review
- Date of next rent review if scheduled
- How is the property used – eg, stock farm (cattle), stock farm (sheep), dairy farm, arable farm, other (please give information if known)
- Does the property include any dwellings?
- Does the property include any other buildings?
- Is the property part of an agri-environment scheme?
- Is the property farmed organically?
- Does the property offer public access (either footpaths, or permissive access)?

Please also provide a map (or maps) showing the locations and boundaries of all agricultural properties.

Also, please would you tell me what person or department supervises agricultural land, and what is your long-term management goal with respect to agricultural property generally. Also, please provide a copy of your most recent agricultural property management plan/report/review document.

If answering this request will take longer than 18 hours, then I would appreciate advice on how to limit it so that it fits within the time limit. Please keep any redactions to a minimum so that the information provided can be as complete as possible.

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Thank you for contacting Somerset County Council. I have logged your FOI
request with the relevant department. Your reference number is 2031256.
If you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact
us again.

Thank you for your request for information of which we are dealing with
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We are currently dealing with
your request and will be in touch shortly concerning disclosure of the
information you have requested.

The legislation obliges us to provide you with this information within 20
working days, so we will endeavour to send our response to you by

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"Section 10(6) states that the “date of receipt” is “the day on
which the public authority receives the request for information”.
There is no requirement for this to be a working day. Indeed the
“date of receipt” could be at a weekend, on a bank holiday or any
other day on which an office is closed.
...
Example
A public authority receives a request on a Saturday when it is closed. That counts as the day of receipt."

Q1. Please would you provide me with a list of all open, wooded, or
agricultural property? (Please exclude allotments, cemeteries, school
playing fields, car parks and highways, and parcels of less than 0.5
acres, unless doing so would add to the cost of the reply.)

A1. Please see attached spreadsheet.

Q2. For each property, please tell me:

Q2a. Exact size in hectares

Q2b. Postcode

Q2c. Parish

Q2d. Current use (e.g. agricultural, park, vacant, surplus, etc)

Q2e. Whether tenanted (or sublet) or not

Q2f. Tenure (i.e. does the city own it freehold, or leasehold)

A2a – A2f. Please see attached spreadsheet.

Q3. For each tenanted/sublet agricultural property, please tell me:

Q3a. Name of tenant

A3a. Please see attached spreadsheet. Where there is no name for the
tenant we judge this information to be exempt under section 40 of the
Freedom of information act.

This is because section 40 (2) (3)(a)(i)); Personal Information states
that any information to which a request for information relates is also
exempt information if—

(a) it constitutes personal data which do not fall within subsection (1),
and

(b) either the first or the second condition below is satisfied.

(3) The first condition is—

(a) in a case where the information falls within any of paragraphs (a) to
(d) of the definition of “data” in section 1(1) of the Data Protection Act
1998, that the disclosure of the information to a member of the public
otherwise than under this Act would contravene—

A3b – A3i. I can confirm that we hold the information that you are
seeking. However, we judge the information to be exempt under the Freedom
of Information Act and we will not be providing it to you.

Section 43 (2) Commercial interests states that information is exempt
information if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to,
prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public
authority holding it).

Section 43 is a qualified exemption, and accordingly we had to consider
whether the public interest is in withholding the information or in
disclosing it. The arguments for and against disclosure are detailed
below.

For disclosure

Accountability and Transparency for the public to know what Somerset
County Council are spending public funds on.

Against disclosure

Disclosure would compromise the public authority’s ability to renegotiate
fair terms and conditions in future negotiations with future customers.

Having considered the public interest, Somerset County Council’s decision
is therefore to withhold the information.

Q3j. Does the property include any dwellings?

Q3k. Does the property include any other buildings?

A3j – A3k. Please see attached spreadsheet.

Q3l. Is the property part of an agri-environment scheme?

Q3m. Is the property farmed organically?

Q3n. Does the property offer public access (either footpaths, or
permissive access)?

A3l – A3n. This information is not in an easily accessible format, and to
provide this data to you would take us significantly over the 18 hour time
limit.

Q4. Please also provide a map (or maps) showing the locations and
boundaries of all agricultural properties.

A4. This information is not in an easily accessible format, and to
provide this data to you would take us significantly over the 18 hour time
limit.

A5. Somerset County Council does not hold the detailed information you
have requested as contracts for the supply of agricultural property
management have in the most part been novated to our private sector
partner Southwest One.

In 2007, Somerset County Council joined the Southwest One partnership
(along with Taunton Deane Borough Council, Avon & Somerset Police and
IBM). When this joint venture was formed, the responsibility for some of
our services were transferred to the new company and as you may be aware,
as a publically listed company, Southwest One is not required to furnish
any information under the Freedom of Information Act in the same way that
local government organisations (such as Somerset County Council) are. If
you would like to find out more about Southwest One, please visit their
website: [1]http://www.southwestone.co.uk/

Copies of relevant agricultural property management plans/reports/review
documents can be found on Somerset County Council’s website at:

Please quote the reference number 2031256 in any future communications.

An internal review will then be carried out and we will write to you with
the results of our investigation. If you are not content with the outcome
of our review, you may then apply directly to the Information
Commissioner’s Office ([5]www.ico.gov.uk) for an appeal. The Information
commissioner can be contacted at: Information Commissioner's Office,
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113

Finally, please be aware that your response will appear, without your
contact details, on the Council’s website at:

This email, and any attachments is intended solely for the individual to
whom it is addressed. It may contain personal and / or sensitive material
and should be handled according to the principles of the Data Protection
Act 1998. If this email carries a protective marking of PROTECT or
RESTRICTED in the header it should be handled according to HMG guidelines,
if not protectively marked it can be regarded as UNCLASSIFIED.

If this Email has been misdirected, please notify the author immediately.
If you are not the intended recipient you must not disclose, distribute,
copy, print or rely on any of the information contained in it or attached,
and all copies must be deleted immediately.

Whilst we take reasonable steps to try to identify any software viruses,
any attachments to this email may nevertheless contain viruses which our
anti-virus software has failed to identify. You should therefore carry
out your own anti-virus checks before opening any documents. Somerset
County Council will not accept any liability for damage caused by computer
viruses emanating from any attachment or other document supplied with this
email.

All GCSx traffic may be subject to recording and / or monitoring in
accordance with relevant legislation.

Thank you for your response providing some of the information that I requested.

As you acknowledged, the response did not provide answers to several of my questions relating to the tenure and use of agricultural land owned by the Council.

Because you withheld the names of the tenants, I don’t see how providing the rest of the information can pose a privacy issue, so please would you reconsider the decision to withhold the following:
- type of tenancy
- start date
- end date if known
- date of last rent review
- property use
- rent levels*

*As regards the rent levels, I would be satisfied with:
(1) the highest and lowest AHA rents,
(2) the highest and lowest FBT rents, and
(3) the average per-acre AHA rent and average FBT rent per acre (or per hectare if that is how the information is held),

The response also did not provide the long-term management goal with respect to agricultural property, nor did it provide the most recent report relating to such property.

The response did link to a Cabinet Member decision from 2010, authorising certain farms to be considered surplus. This was a helpful starting point.

Unfortunately, this 2010 report is not the most recent report, and it doesn’t state what is the long-term management goal for the retained properties.

Are these 2011 reports the latest ones, or is there a more recent one, perhaps produced in 2012?

The response stated that the Council did not hold information about what its long-term management goal was, because “contracts for the supply of agricultural property management have in the most part been novated to our private sector partner Southwest One.”

I accept that Southwest One helps the council fulfil its management responsibilities with respect to agricultural land. But it seems likely that Southwest One informs the Council, in some fashion, of its decisions and goals relating to agricultural property.

Moreover, neither the 2010 decision nor the Strategic Management Plan 2011 nor the 2011 Update mention Southwest One in the discussion of agricultural property, yet all were prepared several years after the creation of Southwest One. So it appears that overall strategy for property management is still determined by or known to the council.

Perhaps you are unaware that neither the 2010 report nor the two 2011 reports contains the Council’s actual plan for long-term management of the retained estate.

The 2010 document stated only that some farms would have a higher resale value in the future, and that the Council wished to continue to provide some farming opportunities. (Section 4.1)

The Council doesn’t appear to have considered these two statements as a sufficient long-term goal, because the 2011 Strategic Management Plan said on page 16 that the council needed a “plan for the retained estate,” consisting of a “policy strategy for the future management of the retained estate.” The 2011 Management Plan Update uses two very similar phrases on page D-3, when it refers to the aim of “agreeing a policy for the retained estate” and the “aim - … to provide a policy strategy for the future management of the retained holdings”.

Because the 2011 reports show that the Council intended to develop a policy strategy for the future management of the retained estate, I’m trying to find out whether now (over a year later) the Council has in fact done so. This is why I have requested the most recent report.

If the long-term goal is contained in a report from Southwest One, or if the most recent report is actually a report from Southwest One to the Council, then please would you provide this report in fulfilment of my request for the long-term goal and the most recent report.

I would also appreciate an explanation for why the response to my original request was a month late.

If these are not questions that you can answer, then please consider my email as a request for an internal review of Somerset County Council's handling of my FOI request 'Council-owned land' (ref no. 2031256), and pass it on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews. In your response, you stated that this was Peter Grogan, in the Information Resources Team of Client Services, at the Resources Directorate, A2 West, County Hall, Taunton, Somerset, TA1 4DY.

Thank you for contacting Somerset County Council. I have logged your FOI
request with the relevant department. Your reference number is 2113449.
If you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact
us again.

An internal review will be carried out and we will write to you with the
results of our investigation. If you are not content with the outcome of
our review, you may then apply directly to the Information Commissioner’s
Office ([2]www.ico.gov.uk) for an appeal. The Information commissioner
can be contacted at: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House,
Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

This email, and any attachments is intended solely for the individual to
whom it is addressed. It may contain personal and / or sensitive material
and should be handled according to the principles of the Data Protection
Act 1998. If this email carries a protective marking of PROTECT or
RESTRICTED in the header it should be handled according to HMG guidelines,
if not protectively marked it can be regarded as UNCLASSIFIED.

If this Email has been misdirected, please notify the author immediately.
If you are not the intended recipient you must not disclose, distribute,
copy, print or rely on any of the information contained in it or attached,
and all copies must be deleted immediately.

Whilst we take reasonable steps to try to identify any software viruses,
any attachments to this email may nevertheless contain viruses which our
anti-virus software has failed to identify. You should therefore carry
out your own anti-virus checks before opening any documents. Somerset
County Council will not accept any liability for damage caused by computer
viruses emanating from any attachment or other document supplied with this
email.

All GCSx traffic may be subject to recording and / or monitoring in
accordance with relevant legislation.